The Road to Amber, page 5
part #6 of The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny Series
“Oh, I see.”
“Not entirely, I’m certain. Go ahead and experiment. It may seem that the people you treat with it all come to you by chance, but this will not always be the case.”
I nodded and studied the flowers.
“You have a question?” he asked.
“Yes. That candle stub you used for purposes of extending Mrs. Emerson, of Room 465, for six years, plus—How did it come to be snuffed out at just that point, rather than having burned itself all the way down? It’s almost as if you’d—snuffed someone prematurely.”
“It is, isn’t it?” he said, grinning broadly. ”As I mentioned death is a power over life. Let’s have some coffee and our brandy now, shall we?”
* * *
I was more than a little puzzled by the way Morrie ran his business. But it was his show andd he’d always been kind to me. He’d given me a whole new wardrobe for a birthday present, and when I completed my residedency he gave me a new car. Dorel was still in fine fettle, but I needed a car once I began my practlce. I moved Dorel to the rear of the garage and rode him only on the weekends. But I found myself beside going out there more and more, evenings, sitting on the high stool beside the wordbench, popping the tab on a cold one and talking to my bike the way I had when I was a kid.
“Funny,” I said, “that he should give me a wonder drug for saving lives. On the other hand,” I reflected, “it’s obvious that he dld sort of push me into medicine. Could it be that he wants control over the life-giving half of the yin-yang.? Not just letting someone live, but assuring quality time by removmg causes of suffering?”
Dorel’s frame creaked as he leaned slightly m my duectlon. His headlight blinked on, blinked off.
“Is that an affirmative?” I asked.
The blinking was repeated.
“Okay, I’ll take that as ‘yes,”’ I said, “and two for ‘no.’”
One blink followed.
“It would make a kind of sense,” I said, “for two reasons: First, back when I was still at the hospital, I gave a sample of bleafage to Dr. Kaufman, a biochemist, and asked him whether he could determine its major constituents. He died in the lab the next day, and a fire destroyed whatever he was working on. Later, I ran into Morrie in the morgue, and he told me that synthesizing bleafage was a.no-no. He did not want it to become as common as asprin or antibiotlcs. That would make it seem he only wanted certain persons to benefit.
“Second,” I continued, “I believe this guess was confirmed by the instructions he gave me when I set up in private practice.”
Morrie told me that I would get calls from all over for consultations. He never said where they’d get my name or number or why they’d want me, but he was right. They did start coming in. He told me to take my bleafage with me whenever I went, and my special diagnostic tools, but that the entire diagnosis and treatment—or lack of it—would be governed solely by a matter of personal perception: I can see Morrie when other people can’t. He said that in those special cases where I’m called in to consult he would enter the room. If he were to stand at the head of the bed, I was to diagnose and treat, and the patient would live. But if he stood at the foot, I was to perform a few routine tests and pronounce it a hopeless case. “It almost seems as if there were an agenda, as if he had a special deal with some of my patients or a plan into which they fit.”
The light blinked once.
”Ah, you think so, too! Do you know what it is?”
It blinked twice, then a third time.
“Yes and no? You have some guesses, but you’re not sure.”
It blinked once.
“Of course, no matter what the reasons, I’m helping a lot of people who wouldn’t be helped othetwise.”
A single blink.
“Morrie once said that you’re working off a debt by being a bicycle.”
A single blink. “I didn’t understand what he meant then, and I still don’t. Is there a way you could tell me?”
Again, a single blink.
“Well, what is it?”
Abruptly, Dorel rolled across the garage, leaned against the wall, and grew still and lightless. I gathered that meant that I had to figure it out for myself. I tried, too, but was interrupted by a phone call. Emergency. Not at the hospital, but one of those special emergency cases.
“This is Dr. Puleo, Dan Puleo. We met at that ER seminar this spring.”
“I remember,” I said.
“Speaking of emergencies…”
“You got one?”
“There’s a limousine on the way to pick you up.”
“To take me where?”
“The governor’s mansion.”
“This involves Caisson himself?”
“Yes.”
“How come he’s not in the hospital?”
“He will be, but you’re near and I think you can beat the ambulance.”
“I think I can beat the limo, too,” I said, “if I take the bike trail through the park.”
I hung up, snatched my med kit, ran back to the garage.
“We’ve got to get to the governor’s mansion fast,” I said to Dorel as I wheeled hlm out and mounted.
What followed was a blur. I remember dismounting and making my way shakily to the door. Somehow I was inside then shaking hands with Puleo and being escorted into a bedroom as the doctor said something about a bad bout of flu recently, kidney stones last year, and no history of heart problems. No vital signs at the moment either.
I stared at the figure on the bed-Lou Caisson, a reform governor who was doing a great job on a number of fronts his predecessor had let slide, as well as maintaining the previous administration’s gains. All that, and having an attractive, talented daughte like Elizabeth, as well. I had not seen her since we’d broken up back in school and headed for different parts of teh country. As I moved forward to begin my examination, I felt a guilty pang. I had let Morrie break us up, with his insistence that I attend a West Coast med school after I’d been accepted at the one with the Eastern university she was to attend.
Speaking of Morrie…
A shadow slid forward and Morrie stood at the foot of the bed. He was shaking his head.
I checked for a carotid pulse. There was none. I ralsed an eyelid…
Suddenly, I was mad. As I heard the sirens in the distance, I was swept by a wave of anger over every decision in my life that Morrie had influenced. In an instant looking back, I saw just how manipulated I had been with all his little bribes and attentions. I opened my med kit and placed it on the bed.
“Are you going to treat him?” Puleo asked.
I leaned forward, slid my arms beneath Caisson, plcked hlm up. I backed away then, walked around the foot of the bed behind Morrie, and laid him back down again, this time with Morrie standing at hls head. I reached across and picked up my kit.
“I can’t take any responsibility—” Puleo began.
I filled the long syringe.
“If I treat him right now, he’ll live,” I said. “If I don’t, he’ll dle. Its as simple as that.”
I unbuttoned Caisson’s pajama top and opened It.
“David, don’t do it!” Morrie said. I did it—3 cc’s of tincture of bleafage, intracardially. I heard the ambulance pull up out front.
When I straightened, Morrie was glaring at me. He turned away then and walked out of the room without even bothenng to use the door. I heard Caisson gasp. When I checked his carotid again the pulse was present. A moment later he opened his eyes. I put my kit away and buttoned his shirt.
“You’ll be all right,” I said to him.
“What course of treatment is indicated now?” Puleo asked.
“Put him in the ICU and watch him for twenty-four hours. If he’s okay after that, you can do whatever you want with him.”
“What about continuing medication?”
“Negative,” I said. “Excuse me. I have to go now.”
When I turned away she was standing there.
“Hi, Betty,” I said.
“David,” she said, “is he going to be all right?”
“Yes.” I paused, then, “How have you been.”
“Oh, pretty well.”
I started toward the door, then stopped.
“Could we talk for a minute, in private?” I asked.
She led me to a little sitting room, where we sat.
“I wanted you to know I’ve been missing you for a long time,” I said, “and I’m sorry about the way I broke up with you. I suppose you’ve got a boyfriend now?”
“I take it that means you’re unencumbered yourself?”
“That’s right.”
”And if I am, too?”
“I’d like to go out with you again. Get to know you again. Is there any possibility? Might you be interested?”
“I could tell you that I’m going to have to think about it. But that wouldn’t be true. I have thought about it, and the answer is yes, I will go out with you.”
When I reached out and squeezed her hand, she returned the pressure. We sat and talked for the next two hours and made a date to go out the next night. Riding back through the park in the dark, I switched on Dorel’s headlight and was reminded of our earlier “conversation.”
“Talk! Damn you!” I said. “I want your opinion!”
“All right.”
“What?”
“I said, ‘All right.’ What do you want to know?”
“How come you wouldn’t talk to me earlier?”
“I could only talk if you ordered me to. This is the first time you have.”
“What are you—really?”
“I was a physician he’d trained in early nineteenth-century Virginila. Name’s Don Laurel. I did something he didn’t like. Manufactured and sold a patent medicine—Laurel’s Bleafage Tonic.”
“Must have helped some people he didn’t want helped.”
“Aye, and maybe a few horses, too.”
“I just saved someone he didn’t want saved.”
“I don’t know what to tell you—except that I was arrogant and insolet when he confronted me concerning the medicine, and I wound up as transportation. You might want to try a different tack.”
“Thanks” I said, plucking a quarter from under the headlight and flipping it. “Tails. I will.”
Of Course Morrie came by later.
“Evening,” I said. “Care for a cup of tea?”
“David, how could you?” he asked. “I’ve been good to you, haven’t I? How could you go against my express wishes that way?”
”I’m sorry, Morrie,” I said. “I did it because I felt sorry for the guy—starting off with such a great year in office, particularly those health care programs, putting all those fat-cat business interests in their place, and being taken out of the game so suddenly. And—well I used to date his daughter. I still like her, as a matter of fact, and I felt sorry for her, too. That’s why I did it.”
He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it.
“David, you’re a good-hearted boy,” he said. “It’s hard to fault a man for compassion, but in my line of work it can be a liability. You’re going to have to be ruled by your head, not your heart, when you’re working my cases, you understand?”
“Yes, Morrie.”
“Okay, let’s have that cup of tea and talk football.”
Three days later I was doing some work around the house when the phone rang. I recognized the governor’s voice immediately.
“How are you feeling, sir?” I asked.
“Fine, and I know l owe you a lot, but that’s not why I’m calling,” he said.
I knew it. Before he said another word, I could feel it coming: Morrie’s revenge. My test.
“Emergency?” I said.
“That’s right. It’s Betty, and from what Puleo told me about my seizure this sounds like the same thing. He didn’t say anything about its being contagious.”
”I’ll be right over.”
“Should I call an ambulance?”
“No.”
I hung up, got my kit, went for Dorel. As we headed through the park, I told him what had happened.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“You know what I’m going to do.”
“I was afraid of that.”
And so, as I checked her over, Morrie entered the room and stood at the foot of the bed. I drew 3 cc’s into the syringe, then I turned her around.
“David, I forbid it,” he said.
“Sorry, Morrie,” I told him, and I administered the injection.
When she opened her eyes, I leaned down and kissed her, at about the same time that I felt Morrie’s hand upon my shoulder. This time his grip was icy.
“Me, too,” he said.
* * *
…And then we were walking in total silence through a dim place of constantly shifting shadows.
I seem to recall moving amid pieces of my world, in monochrome, as well as the way into his, down under the ground, of caves, tunnels, still pools. I knew we were arrived when we entered a tunnel lined with candles and followed it to that bright and massive central grotto where we had played so long at chess and drunk so much chocolate.
Passing through that vast gallery I seemed to acquire solidity once more. My footfalls created echoes. I felt again that cold grip which steered me. Some of the shadows fell aside, like drawn curtains.
Morrie took me through the grotto, up a corridor, then down a small, chilly tunnel off to its left which I had never visited before. I was too proud to ask him where we were headed and so be the first to speak.
At length, we halted, and he released my arm and gestured.
Jamming my cold hands into my pockets, I followed the gesture but could not at first tell what he was indicating, as we stood in a fairly average area of his office, ledges and niches full of candles. Then I saw that one of them was much lower than all of the others and was flickering now, preparatory to guttering. Assuming it to be Betty’s, I waited to see it replaced by the action of one of the invisible entities.
“It was worth it,” I said. “I love her, you know.”
He turned and stared at me. Then he chuckled.
“Oh, no,” he said. “You think that that’s her candle? No. You don’t understand. She’ll live. You’ve seen to that. Her candle is already in good shape. This is your candle. You started out kind of handicapped in that regard. Sorry.”
I withdrew a hand from my pocket, reached out, touched it gently.
“You mean that’s all I have? Maybe a few minutes? And you didn’t mess with it because you’re mad at me? That’s really the way it is?”
“That’s right,” he said.
I licked my lips.
“Any—uh—chnce of an—extension?” I asked.
“When you’ve crossed my will a second time, after I’d warned you?”
“I didn’t do it lightly,” I said. “I told you I’d know Betty years ago, and I cared about her then. I didn’t realize how much until just recently, when it was almost too late. There was no real choice then. I had to save her. Perhaps such emotions are something you cannot quite understand—”
He laughed again.
“Of course I can understand caring about something,” he said. “Why do you think I’d decided to take Governor Caisson right when I did? The son of a bitch’s business policies had just cost the town a pro football franchise—for my favorite team. And I’d been angling to get them here for over a generation.”
“So you were grabbing him off early?”
“You bet I was. Then you had to butt in for the first time in your life.”
“I begin to understand… Say, Morrie, you know it’s not too late to transfer my flame to a fresh candle.”
“True,” he acknowledged, “and you are my godson. That still counts for something.”
He stared a moment longer at the candle.
“Probably should,” he said. “Shouldn’t stay mad forever. Family counts for something… ” and he stooped and reached into an opened case back in a recess in the wall.
Drawing forth a candle, he stood and reached forward with his other hand toward my sputtering taper. He touched it, began to raise it. Then I saw it slip from his fingers and plunge groundwards.
“Shit!” I heard Morrie say as it fell. “Sorry, David—”
* * *
Lying on the floor, watching a tiny spark, feeling that something had worked properly, not recalling what… And my cheekbone was sore where I’d hit it when I fell.
I lay amid countless lights. There were things I had to do, and do quickly. What were they?
I raised my head and looked about. Morrie was gone…
Ah, yes. Morrie, my godfather. Gone…
I placed my palms upon the floor and pushed myself up. Nobody there but me, a guttering candle, and a black bicycle. What was it I was supposed to remember? My mind felt heavy and slow.
“Get a candle out of the box, David! Hurry!” Dorel told me.
“You’ve got to take the flame from the other before it dies again.”
Dies again…
Then I remembered and shuddered. That’s what I had done—died. And I would do it again and for keeps if I didn’t act quickly. Fearing the worst, I had been able to buy this brief recurrence of the light, finally finding a use for the Five-Minute Time Warp I kept in my pocket. But how long it would last, lying there, sputtering, upon the floor, I could not tell.
I moved with accelerated deliberation—that is to say, as fast as I felt I could without disturbing the air to the point of ending the enterprise. It was just a piece of wick in an irregular puddle of wax now.
I groped in the carton, took out a candle, moved it to a position above the failing flame, held it there. For a second, the first one nearly died and my vision darkened and a numbness passed over me. But it caught, and these symptoms vanished. I turned it upright then and rose to my feet, groping once again in my pocket. I carried dried stems, flowers, roots, and leaves of bleafage wrapped in a handkerchief.
I placed the handkerchief on Dorel’s seat and unfolded it.
“Good idea,” he suggested as I began eating the specimens. “But as soon as you’re finished I want to lead you to another tunnel where we can hide your candle amid many. We ought to hurry, though, in case he’s still in the area.”
